Bullshit Jobs

I don't even think about I was just telling my stories to my friends. You know, like it looks like someone only had one funny anecdote last week

“Yeah, that's how many you fucking have every week. All right”

Fucking kings of colony over here to like, oh, you're using your bits everyone else just tells one story to one person

And it's just done nobody ever pizza anything that happened to them. You know good my stories are by the third time

I'm telling him like oh, I work job. Yeah, dude Okay, I actually this this one has like a really obvious like little zinger to it Yeah, but I don't know how to word it, but I don't know how to word it Michael. Peter. What do you know about bullshit jobs? Oh, I know is that I'm excited to talk about this book from the vantage point of my own Bullshit jobs written by David Graber came out in 2018

Graber is an anthropologist and he is a hardcore lefty He considers himself an anarchist. So finally, we're doing a book by someone who's not a reactionary centrist I was a minor standing as his work is like good. It's a pretty good book

It makes some important points. It prods at some good and correct ideas

“I think like my big picture criticisms of it are”

One it's like really meandering in the way that a lot of like lefty theory is yeah, it's hard for him to land at a point He says a lot of things where you're like okay, I like this and then he just sort of like meanders on until you're like all right I no longer get it. This is like meeting anyone in Seattle, Washington You're just like a cocktail party. You're like I think I agree I don't know what you're saying though my other big picture criticism is that the book really screams for data

But he doesn't give it. Oh, really that's surprising actually sometimes he's doing it very knowingly being like look I'm a I'm a theory guy You know, yeah, so like if someone wants to look into this they should but there are other times where it's like there is data here And I feel like he could have looked for it. That is reactionary centrist coded It is, I'm not going to look up the premise of my book and whether it's true

Also wait with me with me to comment didn't he like die tragically he passed away in 2020 quite young So yeah, we will we will speak of him respectfully. Yeah, I mean, he seems like a nice guy with good ideas like I feel like it's not This is going to be a much less donkey episode. It sounds like yeah. Unfortunately. There aren't I'm just going to send you various excerpts and then we will think about them Rather than my usual MO of just finding the dumbest shit in every book

Yeah, I'm sending it to you, but this was like a heavily requested book So it's like it was inevitable that we would do this. It just sounds like it has yielded a sort of like a A portrait of like a book that is kind of interesting, but falls apart in some places. Not yeah, not like a fuck this book or fuck this guy Kind of episode. I'm going to give the definition of bullshit job right off the bat. I'm talking to a microphone You post it on Patreon. Yes, I know a bullshit job is quote a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless

unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though as part of the conditions of employment The employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case. That sounds quite extreme That sounds like it would be very huge jobs in America actually. It is very extreme and we'll get into like exactly what he means in more detail But for color because he's on the left this is mostly directed at like certain types of white collar work That he thinks add no real value to society

He distinguishes between bullshit jobs and what he calls shit jobs Which are just sort of like the traditional bad job like low pay maybe degrading right your treated poorly by society

“Yeah, those are like various essential jobs. They just suck. Yeah. That's what he says that those jobs are in fact”

Often not bullshit at all. They're very important work not to do like pot calling the kettle black or whatever But like it is also funny to write a whole book about this while being like a Marxist scholar at a liberal arts university That's like you could also argue as we we speak into microphones from our our from our own homes If you ever try to describe what you do to someone who doesn't know about podcasts It's impossible to describe it in a non humiliating way. It's so weird when you don't know someone because

When they eventually ask enough questions to find the name of the podcast, yeah, here's here's a link to all of my opinions

I have kind of started dating somebody recently and he didn't know about the show when he first met me

But like when you're in this stage like you're going on a couple days You like each other your flirt and texting whatever. He's like it's weird to have like 600 hours of your opinions on things that I can just like go Listen to what any point Yeah, like this guy. I'm seeing what what does he think of princess Diana? I want one day for there to be someone who's like, oh, you're the girl on his books After meeting me on grinder, yes, so in 2013

We've often had these situations where we're like this should really just be an essay Yeah, and sometimes it was yes, and sometimes it was You do get the sense that someone was like David can you turn this into a book and he was like all right because honestly At least what I understand to be the premise sounds like a fine essay like some percentage of the American economy is just like people Kind of pretending to do stuff or like things that don't really need to exist

But also if you extend that to 300 pages you then do need to provide some data

“You need to write examples and then also seems like it would kind of fall apart the essay is super short”

And so you actually end up with a weird situation where like the essay could be longer But the book could be a lot shorter. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna send you some of the essay and we can talk about it I think he hits on like this general idea. That's very true, but then the more specific he tries to get the more you're like Ah, I don't know. Yeah, all right. I'm gonna send you The opening bits here in the year 1930 John Manard Keene's predicted that by centuries end

Technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15 hour work week There's every reason to believe he was right in technological terms We are quite capable of this and yet it didn't happen instead technology has been marshaled if anything to figure out ways to make us all work more In order to achieve this jobs have had to be created that are effectively pointless Huge swaths of people in Europe and North America in particular spend their entire working lives

Performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound It is a scar across our collective soul yet virtually no one talks about it I already disagree with this. I I have had jobs that are sort of on the bullshit spectrum I mean this like when I used to work in NGOs, but I don't think it's that the job was bullshit

“I think it just wasn't a 40 hour job it was like 10 hours of kind of real stuff and then 30 hours of bullshit”

I know that you're gonna keep jumping the gun on me. Oh, I kind of agree with you I think that one of the problems here is that he tries to drop jobs into a category

It's a bullshit job or not, but the reality is that a large part of almost any job has like a bullshit component

Yes, yeah, yeah, all right. I'm gonna send you more He says a recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture Over the course of the last century the number of workers employed as domestic servants in industry and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically at the same time Professional managerial clerical sales and service workers tripled growing from 1/4 to 3/4 of total employment in other words Productive jobs have just as predicted then largely automated away

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects Pleasures visions and ideas we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the service sector as of the administrative sector Up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law Academic and health administration human resources and public relations. I like strongly disagree with this

Public relations is an important thing like I did public relations for NGOs It's important to get the word out about like fucking conflict minerals. I don't know like so I mean I agree there's there's an imprecision in his terms a lot

There's another problem here which I feel like is classic lefty stuff, which is like sometimes you get the sense that he's never really worked for a company

Right, he's just sort of eyeballing it. He's also doing a weird thing kind of from the left that you see from the right a lot Where it's this idea that things like farming and manufacturing are like real jobs like oh, we used to make things in America And then all these office jobs are like knowledge jobs are fake But I also just don't agree with the premise. I think there's lots of jobs where he said to the desk there totally worthwhile I wrote a note down in some sections where I just said noble savage next to some of his discussion of like

Manufacturing work for example right because even in my like limited exposure to blue collar jobs when I was young You see a lot of the same phenomenon that he's describing and white in white collar work right where work is is Redundant or whatever it might be and we'll get into it. Yeah, now I'm gonna send you one last bit of the essay He says the rule in class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger and On the other hand the feeling that work is a moral value in itself

And that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours

deserves nothing is extraordinarily convenient for them. So I think he's basically saying look the ruling class has opposed policies that would create

More free time and fostered policies that incentivize work. That's true

“That's just like straightforwardly true. Yeah, I think I think if you're looking at it that simply not hard to believe right?”

Like yeah, the idea that like wealthy capitalists oppose things like working hours reductions or mandatory free time Yeah, that's just obvious empirically true But also that feels distinct from the phenomenon of bullshit jobs to me. Yeah, I so I agree

But you can sort of piece it together

What he's basically saying is like we've had these big increases in productivity has it brought us know any more leisure time

No, and that's because there are these great Institutional forces that oppose that and want to redirect our productivity elsewhere. That seems true. That seems fair. There's a big response to this essay a bunch of people write it up a bunch of Marxists start arguing about it and I won't I won't get into it. I want it. I will tell you my first run at this episode I was like maybe I'll cover these intro Marxists debates and I'm like I didn't want to say and it was like

In 2015 someone took a bucket of quotes out of the essay and plastered them all over the London Metro The London Metro the two of you man the tube sorry sorry phone the Metro. Sorry to were well-traveled listeners We know basic things because of the basic things So it's like you ever did you ever done you was like the London Metro in your life? Also it might have also been buses That's also not the Metro. There's no but it's not the two by there. So what ever don't try to a fucking uno reverse

“Just accept the L and move on now. I don't think it's an L. I think that I introduce a nuance that you can't explain”

So yeah, so they put up these quotes one of them says huge swaths of people spend their days performing tasks They secretly believe Do not really need to be performed one says it's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs for the sake of keeping us all working These are quotes from the essay and they sort of cause a little bit of stir of a stir they get on the news I'm trying to decide whether I think this sort of thing is cooler whether it would just piss me off

If I'm like on my way to work and it's like great some fucking communist Yeah, it's telling me my job's useless. Also. I don't believe I don't agree with the second one Why would somebody make up a job so they can pay you to do nothing? He does have a theory of this that we'll talk about and it is a little bit abstract and I don't quite buy it either Okay, he writes this book bullshit jobs to flesh the theory out published in 2018 and a lot of his research for the book

Is essentially just compiling Anicdotes from people who reach out to them about their bullshit jobs. Those actually sound fun to be honest. I will say as a data set It's pretty obviously terrible. Yeah, right here people who reach out to a leftist academic To complain about the bullshit jobs probably not the you know the best the representative of samples But he uses that to delineate what he believes are the five a proximate categories of bullshit

Okay, flunkies goons duct tapeers box tickers and task masters Okay, now this is not meant to be exact or exhaustive Yeah, I don't think it's it's just useful groupings, right so we'll start with flunkies

“flunkies are people whose jobs exist entirely to make their bosses feel or seem important”

Okay, I'm gonna send you a little bit here. He says another term for this category might be futile of retainers

Throughout recorded history rich and powerful men and women have tended to surround themselves with servants clients

Sick offense and minions of once or or another not all of these are actually employed in the grandest household and many of those who are are Expected to at least do some actual work, but especially at the top of the pyramid. There's usually a certain portion whose job it is To basically just stand around and look impressive So old fashioned futile retainer style jobs still do exist Dorman are the most obvious example. They perform the same function in the houses of the very rich

That electronic intercoms have performed for everyone else since at least the 1950s This also is like I don't think that's Dorman often serve like a security function don't they they give some like out-dated examples

“That I think are a little more accurate one is elevator operators, which I think might be like one of the better examples here”

But also do those even still exist. I mean those not really need one certain receptionists You know, he believes are basically just there for aesthetics probably true. I guess but even a receptionist is like part of like marketing the company Right you get to a place and like a person says hi there. Welcome. What can I do for you? That's there's some value in that there's certain things like marketing and advertising that you get the sense that he just doesn't really like respect as an endeavor Right and you can also see here he loves the idea that corporations

Retain or like recreate certain like futile dynamics and Like one of his overall theories here and we'll touch on this a bit later, too. Is that like corporations are not like hyper-efficient like the libertarians Would have you both yeah, that's true. Yeah, but are instead sort of like mechanisms for distributing wealth and power In a almost political sense that feels like totally legitimate. Let's keep go let's keep going goons are people who's jobs Have an aggressive element, but crucially who exists only because other people employ them

Okay, here's what he means by that the most obvious example of this are national armed forces

Countries need armies only because other countries have armies if no one had an army

Like literal goons, they have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would concur that

We're all telemarketers to disappear. The world would be a better place But I think most would also agree that if all corporate lawyers bank lobbyists or marketing gurus We're too similarly vanish in a puff of smoke the world would be at least a little more bearable This again is like a weird category error thing because like telemarketing like it's obviously a bad job And I like I hate getting telemarketer clothes, but I don't need I don't think it's bullshit in that way

Because it does result in sales right? Well, I think when he said telemarketer I did kind of click in my brain because there were definitely some jobs where the central purpose is

“Essentially to trick or bully someone in buying a product or a service that they do not need right and I think that's what he's getting at”

Dude, I sold frozen stakes over the phone for exactly one day I was in college and I couldn't fucking handle it. That was a bullshit job I'm not sure I think it's right that lobbyists and PR people and lawyers wouldn't exist if others didn't exist Right, yeah, if you look at like some basic corporate lawyer bullshit like they write contracts Yeah, again, I just I'm not entirely here that he understands these industries and marketing gurus

I mean it kind of depends on what they're marketing like maybe they're marketing garbage But they might be marketing like a couch that you like to sit on I mean it's like people buy objects that they need in their lives as well I don't know all right the next category duct tapers Okay duct tapers are quote employees whose jobs exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization who are there to solve a problem that ought not to exist

Okay, so like you know there there are a lot of people in software where it's like yeah There's like two pieces of software sort of budding together awkwardly and then someone's job is to smooth over the resulting issues Right, but that again doesn't feel like bullshit because you're like making something work

“I think I agree, but I think he's sort of saying like there's an ideal world where this doesn't this problem doesn't exist right? I guess, but”

I think this is like the one that makes the least sense to me because like there's a problem

And then someone gets hired to fix it and the problem is fixed

But then you like oh, no, it's bullshit because the problem shouldn't have existed in the first place Here's his attempt to to to to draw a line between what he's saying and what we're saying There will always be a certain gap between blueprints, schemes, and plans and their real world implementation Therefore, there will always be people charged with making the necessary adjustments What makes such a role bullshit is when the plan obviously can't work and any competent architecture of known it

When the system is so stupidly designed that it will fail in completely predictable ways But rather than fix the problem the organization prefers to hire full-time employees whose main or entire job is to deal with the damage It's as if a homeowner upon discovering a leak in the roof decided it was too much bothered to hire a roofer to reshingle it And instead stuck a bracket underneath it and hired someone whose full-time job was to periodically dump the water I guess but then it's like this is a much smaller percentage of jobs then and it's very much of the eye of the holder

I do feel like it's telling that he had to make up a fake thing Yeah, rather than just tell us about a job that he thinks it's this clean right right But I think if you're trying to if you're trying to do a good-faith thing here He's saying there are people whose jobs are really the result of an inefficiency It could be addressed more directly feels like a different category than like telemarketers, but okay

I agree. I do I think he really kind of hits a stride when he's talking about industries or work that are like Scami yeah, yeah, yeah, like really are like an obvious drain on society Yeah, which feels like like the the amount of the American economy that is now dedicated to fucking scams was like Absolutely should be and I'm sure is the subject of like many books It's like an actual huge problem

But I feel like different than just like people who do PR are bullshit I love I love watching you have to go through the same process that I did Yeah, every single one of these where you're like, yeah, kind of but not really right because it does feel like the phenomenon that we're talking about Where it's like you read the essay You're like yeah, man some jobs are bullshit here some funny samples. It's like you get in you get out in a couple thousand words

Yeah, but like as soon as now you're trying to specify Ah, there's actually different categories of bullshit jobs. It's like are they though?

“I think this should be familiar to anyone who does like work like hours or rights, right?”

We're like, oh, I have this idea and I'm gonna flesh it out and then you try to flesh it out and you're like actually I'm stupid This is a dumb idea. Yeah, don't let it all right next box tickers box tickers are quote Employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that in fact It is not doing okay, send in you a bit the following testimony is from a woman hired to coordinate leisure activities in a care home Most of my job was to interview residents and fill out a recreation form that listed their preferences

That form is then logged on a computer and then promptly forgotten about forever. The paper form was also kept in a binder for some reason

completion of the forms was by far the most important part of my job in the eyes of my boss

And I would catch hell if I got behind on them a lot of the time I would complete a form for a short-term resident and they would check out the next day. I threw away mountains of paper We found what that's like a straightforwardly bullshit job. Yeah, a friend of mine is applying for a Citizenship in Germany. Germany's like famously like they still use like fax machine machines for shit in Germany It's like super paper and pencil. There's an online form where you fill it out

Oh my god, he's like standing there watching someone type into a computer a thing that he already typed into a computer This is like the The fact that you submit a PDF resume and then also have to go into a fucking form. Yeah, so here's a little more about box ticking And I thought this is interesting

“It's less obviously bullshit than the care home example, but I think he's getting at something here”

He says we're all familiar with box ticking as a form of government if a government's employees are caught doing something very bad Taking bribes for instance or regularly shooting citizens at traffic stops

The first reaction is invariably to create a fact-finding commission to get to the bottom of things

This serves two functions. First of all, it's a way of insisting that aside from a small group of miscreants No one had any idea that any of this was happening. This is of course rarely true Second of all, it's a way of implying that once all the facts are in someone will definitely do something about it This is usually not true either a fact-finding commission is a way of telling the public that the government is doing something It is not but large corporations will behave in exactly the same way if say they are revealed to be employing slaves or child laborers

And their government factories or dumping toxic waste This is again really cynical, I think sometimes it is like Seattle Seattle's in the middle of this fucking cycle We do like fact-finding on homelessness. Yeah, I mean all of the fact-finding commissions are like we need to be spending like 10 times more on this And then we just don't do anything because nobody wants to spend any fucking money and then like five years later

They're like oh, we go to get data. Oh, let's do a fact-finding commission and the fact-finding commission finds the same fucking thing

So like that Partly rings true, but there's also fact-finding commissions that are like right right and then you move forward with a policy and you do something about it In my world Joe Biden put together a commission on Supreme court reform and like as soon as they announce the commission you're sort of like all right. Yeah So I don't know there's something here and certainly I believe that there are major corporations where this exists entirely as like

A PR exercise that everyone knows is fraudulent top to bottom, but also they're pretty good I mean a lot of my work in human rights is about corporate human rights violations and if you look at labor standards in a peril in like You know Indonesia in places that had these big scandals at like Nike in the early 90s They actually have much better working conditions than they did back then and some of the best working conditions in the developing world are in like

Brand name factories for like companies you've heard of because they've improved so

Sometimes it's bullshit. It's very often bullshit, but sometimes it's not obviously you're more pro-corporation than I am

“Like that's what that's one of the big disagreements we have in the podcast, but no, I tend to agree with you”

I the human rights base is not my space, but like if people ask me from like an employment law Perspective better to work for a big company or a small one big one Right most every time. Yeah, they're a little more on it I and I do I do believe that he has like a deep and Partially justified but not entirely skepticism or cynicism about big corporations

Yeah, he should really direct more generally, right? Yeah, yeah, well, he also says this. I want to know what you think about this many large corporations maintain their own in-house magazines or even television channels The ostensible purpose of which is to keep employees up-to-date on interesting news and developments But which in fact exist for almost no reason other than to allow executives to experience that warm and pleasant feeling that comes when you see a favorable story about you in the media

Well, then it's got value baby, then it's not bullshit. This is what we're like as so like when I was in employment law You're sort of adjacent to HR and you see a lot of the internal marketing shit Yeah, I do think internal marketing at large corporations. It's tough It's tough. I know that this is value less. It's it's obviously designed for employee morale But you'll literally be watching a video where they they like hired actors to just play

Happy employees That's something that is this. Yeah, like if bullshit jobs exist. Yeah, surely in-house

“magazines and and in-house television channels fall into that category. Wait. Do you want to hear my best example of this Peter?”

You know, I just got back from LA and I heard from someone who's like sort of adjacent to Hollywood there that you know There's like for your consideration. Yeah, it'll be like Timothy Shalame and Doon or whatever Apparently that this is the conspiracy theory for which I have no evidence, but I'd like this story Okay, apparently they put those billboards up near the actors Houses so that when like Timothy Shalame is driving around

He sees the billboards and like four-year consideration Timothy Shalame, so that he thinks like, oh, the studio is really supporting me in this But it's not actually for the Oscar voters It's just so that the actors think for the studio is behind them so they can like sign them for another role Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I believe because it's the kind of thing that I would do Yeah, I have what I think is a good example of box ticking. Okay, sometimes if you work at a company

You will need to hire an outside law firm and you will hire a very fancy law firm that costs more Not because they're better, but because of something goes sideways and one of your higher-ups comes looking for you

No, not necessarily, but how many people's jobs within those firms rest on that principle?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right finally the last category of bullshit job task masters

Task masters are employees Quote who's role-consist entirely of assigning work to others or quote those who make up bullshit for others to do

“I also think that every bad boss I've ever had is doing a bullshit job. Yeah. I mean, I think at a glance”

I was really skeptical of this one because assigning work is sort of obviously not pointless. Yeah That's just called management. Yeah, but when he goes through examples It's obvious he's talking about like middle managers who are supervising people who don't really need supervision Oh, yeah, and I think that guy exists, right? I feel like I have two Criticism of like his whole category idea. One is the one we've touched on which is like not a lot of jobs fall into these categories

But like a little bit of a lot of jobs is bullshit by these definitions, but then also he's thinking in terms of like Jobs within organizations But it makes a little more sense to me to think about it in terms of like industries like does the good or service? You provide have any social value right because you could have two guys that have the same job But toward completely different ends. So like one guy build department buildings and the other builds private prisons, right?

Right, but one of them is less socially valuable and perhaps Dude a couple years ago. I was dating a guy who was an event planner for like, I don't know, Goldman Sachs or one of these like New York financial firms And he was making like $400,000 a year. Yeah, and I also know people who are event planners for NGOs who make like 36,000 dollars a year And it's like it's the same job No, because a event planner in NGO is just putting together like a holiday party at

Goldman Sachs and you'd fucking fireworks Do they have like back playing or something they put you spring right now? No joke though that that Goldman Sachs I'm not you're making I just ain't your point. I'm not trying to argue with it But no joke that Goldman Sachs job probably fucking sucks Do you know yeah the fucking CEO is up here of Goldman Sachs is up your ass because fucking

Tidalasign is 20 minutes late Very awkward for the way that he described it was not it sounded very similar to the people that I know at NGOs It's also like large events. You know that like these like fundraising dinners and stuff

Which are genuinely very difficult to plan. Yeah, yeah, basically a bunch of rich people get together in a room and like you serve them dinner

It doesn't like essentially what he was doing for like whatever city bank or whatever the perfect was and it's like it was remarkably similar I do think that like Graber is not trying to talk about like who bill like who's doing good for society with with their career and Shit like that he's really making this narrower point about how big corporations have become these like sprawling monstrosities that are no longer geared toward efficiency but have developed these like self-contained

patronage operations. I guess again. It's like your data on that it's guess me so different Industry industry and she goes around like that at all. All right. Let's let's talk data This has all been very subjective so far. Which is why neither of us have any idea what the fuck is going on Yeah when Graber wrote the original essay he did not put data in it really And that wasn't really the purpose of it. I guess yeah, the subtitle of it was a work rant, right?

So yeah, yeah, he's not trying to like put a coherent thesis. This isn't anything that your friend would tell you at a bar You're like fire? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're like right dude. Yeah, yeah, you're so right

“You should write about this and if you're on the left your friend does have a magazine that no one reads”

Yeah, exactly. He's like you should write for my magazine When the essay game fraction you go of runs a poll in the UK and Graber puts the results in his book as sort of like a proof of concept The you go of headline reads 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless Which is pretty dramatic. Yeah, that's really high actually. Graber cites the poll in his opening chapter Basically being like look. I was right, but it's also totally subjective

Yeah, but here's but here's what the poll asks. Okay, the poll asks is your job making a

meaningful contribution to the world. Oh, well That's like completely different. Yeah, it really it really is, right? So 50% said yes 37% said no and 13% said they didn't know If you look back to his definition of a bullshit job, it's like a job that is entirely pointless right if someone says

“Are you making a meaningful contribution to the world that reads to me like a significant contribution to the world right?”

Moreally valent in some right right like there's all like either it's a large contribution or yeah has has a sort of moral quality to it Yeah, and so yeah, I think a lot of people are just sort of like oh I don't know like I know because like as a teenager I worked it for years in video stores and like that was not a bullshit job

It was like a charity or something. It's like I sat at the counter and build rented videos whatever Right, I would have answered no to that question, but I don't think that was a bullshit job He also sites a poll of Dutch workers from 2016 where according to him a 40% of respondents said that their jobs had no reason to exist But very similarly if you look at the poll the actual question was about like whether they experience their job as meaningful So like it's very similar, right? Yeah, he does make a big case for self reporting about this

He basically says like look there's no way to like come up with a objective metric

Yeah, that's the bullshit job is and like the best we have is self reporting because people have a decent sense of this stuff

“And like they might not always be correct in our opinion, but right this is basically this is the best way to go”

And I kind of I agree There is no way to do an objective determination of whether a job is bullshit and maybe self reporting is best But the other side of that is self reporting is still very bad Yeah, and also it's like the the reason why the only thing that works is self reporting is partly because of the mudiness of the concept Yeah, because you're asking like is your job bullshit? But like the term job kind of implies something you don't want to be doing

You're doing it because you get paid so most people going to say like yeah, my job is bullshit There were a couple years ago some researchers at Cambridge wanted to see whether there was empirical support for this

And they pulled together a bunch of data and they tried to compare it to

He's affirmative hypothesis throughout the book. How many people are gooning? How many of them are duct taping? Yes They looked at the European working conditions survey that filed data from 2005 to 2015 So the survey asks workers to rank whether they quote have the feeling of doing useful work on a five point scale

“I think that that much more closely tracks the bullshit job is definition right and when you phrase it that way”

Only 4.8% of respondents said that they did not feel like they were doing useful work at all That's actually lower than I thought it would be that climbs to 5.6 in the UK But like no near oh, I know Peter you look at the UK Not a lot of people are going to use for work here. Just professional trans folks So if you say do you think that your job makes a meaningful contribution to the world?

40% of people say no, but if you're just like well, is it useful at all then only 5% Right, I will note there is some data that shows that in the United States this number goes up pretty dramatically One piece of research said it's at 19% in the United States There's another part of grabers thesis that he lays out in the book that is a little bit testable

Which is that this problem is worsening There is every reason to believe that the overall number of bullshit jobs and even more the overall percentage of jobs Considered bullshit by those who hold them have been increasing rapidly in recent years alongside the ever increasing bullshitization of useful forms of employment So he says like there's every reason to believe that the number of bullshit jobs is going up

But then the only actual evidence he provides is that the service sector is replacing agriculture in industry as Like a percentage of the economy. That's just like a completely different thing That's the thing is like if the claim of the book is like the service sector is a larger part of the economy Then it used to be then like you wouldn't have a book right like that's that's not interesting It's not really debatable. He's doing the thing that you find a lot in the ultra processed foods discourse

Where when people describe it in the abstract they'll say like oh, they're addictive food like substances like the super artificial junk Right, and then you get into the actual categories and it's like all tortillas and like all bread

Because he's basically saying he's he's he's identified this thing of like everyone's doing bullshit jobs

Then you just just like the service sector is increasing like knowledge jobs are increasing which so yeah, but that's not the same thing He's so he's basically arguing that service jobs are frequently bullshit Whereas like agriculture and industry are generally not and so that rise of the service sector indicates a rise in bullshit jobs a lot of These kinds of manufacturing jobs are also bullshit too. You're doing something super redundant That's the thing is there's there's tons of redundancy and like manufacture yeah, but his his point broadly

Is it like technology and automation has Taking all of these jobs and then it's sort of like left avoid that we filled with this bullshit Right that like because we all feel the need to work and Corporations want people employed because they're they're like little feudal societies in his mind that we sort of filled the void created By technology with bullshit jobs. I don't agree with this because again companies wouldn't be spending money on work

Just for like ideological reasons. He thinks that you're a capitalist sucker That that argument is sort of like oh you think markets are efficient dipshit. Well, I don't think that we do efficient But I also think these are like profit oriented industries the whole problem with the way that we structure capitalism is if they put Profit above everything else right. I don't think companies like ha ha we must keep employing people to do nothing

“But yeah, like why do in-house television channels existed corporations?”

Because someone's stupid, right because a bunch of dumb people thought it was a good idea

Indicators that this does affect retention. We probably are being unfair to in-house

In-house television channels or whatever the fuck because if that shit's working to boost morale for like 15% of people Which actually yeah, it's probably worth the investment. Yeah, the fact that it makes us want to kill ourselves It might be a relevant here, right? Yeah, let's dig into this a bit because I think there is this question of like What industries how is the bullshit jobs that graver is is constantly sort of touching on Send you this he says say what you like about nurses garbage collectors or mechanics

It's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke the results would be immediate and catastrophic A world without teachers or dog workers would soon be in trouble and even one without science fiction writers or scom musicians would Clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer if all private equity CEOs

lobbyists PR researchers actually where he's telemarketers bay lifts or legal consultants were too similar to vanish

I mean there's lobbyists for like animal rights and stuff right right right category of lobbyists is Just weird to do this private equity CEOs. He's fucking correct about but that's also that's not because the job is bullshit

“It's because the sector is harmful that's just like a different concept. I and that's what I think he misses with like where”

He has this like perspective on certain industries right and then he's constantly bouncing back and forth between like between being like this role Is bullshit which can be defensible uncertain respects the the lady with the fake paperwork bullshit job And then being like yeah and like lobbying is also bullshit and it's sort of like yeah No, like I have a ton of objections with how this industry

Right parades, but it doesn't feel like it's the same thing where it's just completely pointless Yeah, the fact that he says private equity CEO is really weird right because in most of his categories What makes a bullshit job a bullshit job is like you're doing stuff your boss wants you to do that makes no sense But if you're the CEO of a company you're the one making people do stuff It's also hilarious to include scommetions in this this is such a fucking leftist academic thing to do

This is he's writing this in 2018 and like he's like squirrel nut zippers of the real essential workers

Let's talk about the people that we all know or essential less than Jake

“I think he's getting it something here if you just try to imagine a good faith version of this”

There are some jobs where the utility of that job is just readily apparent if you are sweeping the floor The benefit that you provide is a lot more immediate and clear than someone who is putting together Dex on a marketing team somewhere right? Yeah, I was a teenager like I said I swept floors and if I slacked off for a day someone would notice Yeah, you had this very clear and discreet objective right in this would never happen, but if we were to not release an episode

Every single week nothing would happen. The fans would get anger. You have you started getting? Yeah, I've started getting the mentions when I tweets and they're like oh, so you have time to post but you don't have time to make an episode Well, when it comes to the amount that you post they have a point they have a point Michael It says one must assume that the percentage of nurses bus drivers dentists street cleaners farmers music teachers Repairmen gardeners firefighters set designers plumbers journalists safety inspectors musicians

Tailors and school crossing guards who checked no to the question does your job make any meaningful difference in the world was Approximately zero but also do don't get me started in a fucking school crossing guard That's totally a bullshit job the only reason they existed because the streets in America are so unsafe That's like one of those clutch jobs that he was talking about like a duct tape job I thought you were gonna be like survival of the fittest kids so there's also data in those European worker surveys on how people in those different industries

view The usefulness of their jobs some of it aligns with what he's saying here like the percentage of teachers and nurses who think their jobs are useless is very low in these surveys below 2% But some of the jobs that graper categorizes as clearly useful have Higher rates of workers who say it's useless 9.7% of garbage collectors said they don't feel the job is useful

Really okay, now on the other hand the percentage of people in like financial services said their job is useless is about average It's not below average like you can keep predict okay. It does feel like maybe he's wish casting a little bit here Like he thinks that certain jobs are lecturers and useless and don't add value

“So he thinks oh people will agree with me. Yeah, I think that you probably have a lot of people who have”

tedious jobs if you're a garbage collector and you go from house to house grabbing trash and then Dumping it into the truck and then a couple days later you come back at this more trash. Yeah, and I can see some part of your brain even if it's a rational Yeah, and like what the fuck is this and I you know I swept floors and there is like There is a part of your brain that loses it a little bit right where you're just like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's dirty again But it's also funny because he's kind of locked himself into this self report thing because a lot of people in the financial sector

You might think that's useful, but it's fucking not I think you're right this the self reporting here

“The self reporting thing has blind spots because yeah garbage matter. Yeah, obviously doing useful work”

Those things do not make people feel useful right and then yeah There are people who are like just rent seeking who contribute nothing but make a fortune and like couldn't possibly be convinced that Their jobs are useless because their entire sense of themselves relies on the belief that they are valuable

Yeah, I'm drop shipping vitamins supplements, but I have to believe it's essential because I pay 300 bucks for the seminar

There is research showing that like the more Intanguated the impact of your job is the lower your jobs satisfaction is likely to be so like if you're not seeing the positive impact that you Cause even if you cause it that would make you think that your job is useless, right? Which sort of makes sense it might makes make you think that your job sucks Yeah, this is my human rights career in a nutshell. We're like going to fucking UN conferences and giving speeches and stuff

Like no tangible impact and like everybody would sit around at night just being like what are we doing here? It's cool that you were like this is useless work. I'm gonna go become a podcast or Time to really reach people every extra hour of the Olivia new see episode

We'll put you better place. I want to draw a distinction because this came into my head a couple times when he was talking about like the internal marketing stuff like

“You know the fucking in-house television channels and all that that grinds at you when you if you're if you're I think like us right?”

Like when I worked at a large corporation or two and I saw shit like that. I'd be like Yeah, the other end of that is the way that Elon Musk runs company Exactly. Yeah, where everything is stripped down to the bone and there's none of that. Yeah, and that does I have to say feel worse Yeah, it's like the you know the old saying is that Half of all advertising spending is wasted. It's just hard to identify which half

I feel like a lot of this cultural stuff within corporations a lot of it is bullshit But it's difficult to find exactly where the bullshit is and where the non-bullshit is yeah It's a balancing act and on either side isn't a bus. Yeah, I feel like both of us are just not joiners in that way

Like I've never gotten invested in like the corporation. I work for the school I go to I mean

I do participate in sports fandom so I do understand this. Would you have an emotional response of Kansas City one

“Super Bowl because I had no response whatsoever to Seattle winning not only that when I watch a team”

I like in a high-stakes game and like the playoffs or whatever my anxiety levels are through the Clenched yeah, like real physical anxiety that would be almost impossible for me to replicate outside of like super high stakes works Yeah, yeah, this does make no sense to me, but also I watch Elden Ring no hit randomizer runs and I'm like clenched the entire time So like I do get it on some level. Yeah, I mean that's so much worse It's all fake no I love it when sports people like oh, this is fake like oh, yeah

Like putting a ball in the hoop isn't fucking fake. I know I know that you think that it's all fake But I do feel like there's a spectrum where like no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. What does dumb make-up tutorials or dumb twitch streamers are dumb No, no, they're dumb. It's all bullshit jobs. No, that it's a spectrum. It's a spectrum It's a spectrum and sports are just a little bit farther along than no hit Elden Ring speed runs. Yeah You're watching a 13-year-old like sitting on a gamer chair slash toilet play and you're like this is like

Whatever both of us are watching someone else do something that we are incapable of doing and getting invested It's precisely the same. That's not the definition of sports the quarterback fucking like Dan Marino or whatever Is the same level of bullshit as like the 19-year-old twitch stream that I'm watching Brett Far who's a fucking who's a who's a quarterback dude these are who's a quarterback? These are all athletes from the 80s and 90s Is he their football though? I know they are quarterback. You know what credit where it's due

Thank you now. What's the name of a no hit Elden runs? I'm not gonna say because that it's too embarrassing Yeah, exactly There's a kernel of truth there. There's a kernel of truth. No, not gonna do what makes Sports a little more real is that I am in gate because it is Poppy whatever That what the fucking different than it just like a question of scale

Well, I do think there's a slight difference in that I feel like any 13-year-old who tried really hard could do What the open ranked streamers just got true because they can't do it. There's only like only a few people have done it I'm not gonna name names, but I know the names. There's only a few people who've tried Michael Other people other people are out there getting their dick sucks It's crazy how far off topic. We are right now. We're like

You're just trying to say the word bullshit sometimes so we can tie this back in exactly that's exactly what I'm doing All right there is another if you sort of take a step back and look at his big picture thesis There's testable claim that he makes which is that technology has resulted in us working more

Technology would lead us to wait. Cains fuck. What is it? Yeah, whatever. Okay. Yeah, well, don't say whatever Because I'm gonna get I'm gonna get strong up for this. I'm gonna keep the one where you're wrong

“I'm gonna look it up and then take where you're incorrect. I don't don't worry about it. That's why I'm saying that”

But he basically says look technology has

Gone to a point where it could lead us to lives of leisure but instead quote, it has been marshaled If anything to figure out ways to make us all work more this gets at something that feels instinctively kind of true yeah, which is that technological advances results in more productivity But not a lighter workload right although it does seem like bullshit jobs is the wrong way to look at that There's like sort of specific political science reasons for that. This is the heart of the episode because we've been going back and forth

We'd like well, he's kind of onto something but not really but there are actually Coherent theories of this yeah, it's tough to measure this in in a big picture way But you can just look at average work hours over time Over a long enough time frame you do see that In 1870 the average American worker worked over 3,000 hours a year

Now that's down to about 1800 and obviously that's not just the results of technological advances There are a ton of variables you have rockers rights movements legislation called for changes But you see very very similar trends across the Western world So I think this is the best argument that generally speaking better technology has in fact Reduced overall working hours so right you might look at that at a glance and just think what grieber is wrong

Right he's a kindness dumbass and he does not understand the glory of capitalism

“That's what I'm thinking that's what I'm saying here thinking but if you zoom in the story does get a little bit more complicated”

I'm going to share it chart with you this chart is annual working hours per worker

Crossed various countries yeah, yeah, so basically since what is it roughly?

1980 almost every other country has seen reductions in working hours Especially in Western Europe and we've stagnated so we're basically working the same number of hours that we were in 1980 That's right so there are massive decreases in working hours from 1870 to about 1970 After that it's been largely flat slight declines but really hovering at about 1800 hours worked per year in the United States Whereas Germany is below 1500 so now it seems like maybe graper is getting it something right there have been a ton of

Technological advances since the 70s but this is not reduced American working hours So he may be wrong that bullshit jobs are proliferating but he's right that better technology and more productivity Has not led to more leisure time for Americans at least in the last several decades, which is a big deal graper has a ton of Frankly rambling explanations of why it occurs at like the micro level within organizations a lot of it revolves around his idea of managerial

feudalism You know where where he argues that corporations have grown to resemble Fuel relationships where wealth and power is distributed for political reasons rather than economic reasons We've sort of talked about how this doesn't quite click. Yeah, it's an interesting angle

But I do not believe that corporations have just created 20 to 30 percent fake jobs right yeah out of like a feudal spirit

It feels more like they've just lobbied against things like more vacation time You know maternity leave like this is why hours are so much reduced in Western Europe Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I started talking about Western Europe all right. I mean So his macro explanation is a little more coherent and it's cultural it's basically like Protestant work ethic stuff So I'll send that he says the captains of industry first in America

Then increasingly everywhere have been able to convince the public that they and not those they employ are the real creators of prosperity One could call it a revival of Puritanism But as we've seen this idea goes much further back to a fusion of the Christian doctrine of the curse of Adam with the Northern European notion

“The paid labor under master's discipline is the only way to become a genuine adult”

This history made it very easy to encourage workers to see their work not so much as wealth creation or helping others or at least not primarily so But as self-abnegation it kind of secular hair shirt a sacrifice of joy and pleasure that allows us to become an adult worthy of our consumer toys This argument is basically that we're a society where people get their dignity from work and that has created incentives to pursue work Even if it is pointless. I don't actually after living in Western Europe for 12 years

I don't actually think that's the case. They have the same thing there, but they have fewer working hours than we do and they have like paid vacation Like I just don't think this works for like we work 15% more hours than other Capitalist countries like they also get a sense of self-worth in fucking Denmark, but they just work less than we do so here is my attempt to synthesize bullshit jobs with the best research I could find okay. There's this economist Juliette Shore who Studies this and wrote a very influential book in 1992 called the overworked American and she was also trying to understand

It's very basic phenomenon why did productivity stop reducing hours in the 1970s or so and where did that extra productivity go?

The extra productivity stop turning into more leisure time and started turning into consumption In 1970 household consumption was under 60% of GDP by 1990. It's in the mid 60s and for the last couple of decades after the publication of her book It's been about 70% just sounds 70% okay. She points out that if you survey people they are not materialist They actually value free time. Yeah, she conducted a survey of people making around 30,000 dollars a year Which is about 70,000 in today's money and

asked if they would trade a day of work each week for an equivalent reduction in pay 70% said yes Okay, she also points out that polls asking people to rank their priorities between things like health, family, life, etc

Always result in material things ranking very low

One obvious explanation for this is that people are lying right either to themselves or the pollsters They think they want more leisure time, but when presented with the choice they'll choose more money But sure's broad argument is that these choices are shaped by institutions and norms So not only are there social and cultural pressures to work

“But even if you wanted to reduce your working hours, it's not always easy, right?”

Most people cannot trade their job for a part-time version of their job right there's also a finite amount of well-paying part-time work in general The job market is built around full-time work, right? I also I do this for everything But I also think that decline of unions people don't want to get fired in America So you do what your boss tells you. I mean this this kind of feels obvious and like this is like it's where it's sort of obviously going, right? And like in Germany they're now under

1,400 hours per year on average, right? France however is around 1,500 and you you look at like what what would account for this gap? And she says stronger unions labor law protections mandatory vacation. Why are they working less well? They all take a like a month or two off every single year. I will say like culturally when I work in Denmark I was part of a unionized NGO We would have meetings where my boss would be like, oh, I need you to get me that by Monday and people would just be like, oh no

People come into the like my boss's office and be like, oh, it's sunny out I'm gonna leave it like 330 today. That rocks people are not afraid of getting fired people are so afraid of getting fired America So you was health healthcare often times you're not like you you can get a victim much more easily like losing your job is just

“Objectively much more devastating here and so you have to do whatever you can to keep your job and like you just don't have that in”

Western Europe in the same way right and a lot of that as unions. I mean, you know, it's also like labor protections It's it's other things too. I mean they go hand in hand. Yeah, so I think she's making an argument that like

Half supports graper and half doesn't right. He's basically saying our capitalist overlords want us to work

For this like sort of like abstract reason right where they maintain this like feudal control Over people and it benefits them. She's basically saying No, what's happened is the money goes to consumption so it's not that bullshit jobs are being sort of like Created out of the ether by corporations to keep us working or something along those lines It's that we now consume more which creates demand right so we got richer but instead of saying oh, hey

I'll trade that for free time We traded for consumer goods which creates demand which creates more jobs, right? So you could you could sort of view those the bullshit jobs, right? The the excess consumption that goes beyond what we actually need and That's that's sort of vegan in of itself. The repair man on the lebubu vending machine All right, yes the lebubu is perhaps a great example, right like demand has been created out of thin air

“Yeah, for a thing that literally no one needs right right I think that is sort of a category of bullshit”

It's just like needless consumption watches for example people are buying watches that we do not No, I was just watching a TikTok by like a watch TikTok or dude. I think we've reached the ultimate bullshit job a watch TikTok Anything more bullshit that I'll swear I learn about watch The funniest type of guy is the guy who's like I like a Rolex because

That will get you into the room where you can do more business. Oh, it's like an investment in like my it's like a LinkedIn post Yeah, I'm spending 12 grand on a watch Because it opens doors for me and God knows how much that's worth and it's just like I can't imagine how much of a fucking pervert someone would have to be to be like yeah, I'm definitely going to the guy's seminar now So there is one sort of final thought section. He has okay the final chapter sort of touches on policy

He says I don't usually like putting public policy recommendations in my book

One reason for this is that it has been my experience that if an author is critical of existing social arrangements

Reviewers will often respond by effectively asking so what are you proposing to do about it then? Search the text until they find something that looks like a policy suggestion and then act as if that is what the book is

Pacing income might go far and solving the problems described here

They'll like the response will be to see this as a book about reducing working hours or about universal Basic income and to treat it as if it stands and falls on the workability of that policy or even the ease by which it could be implemented

“I mean, it's fair although that's what we're about to do. Yeah, it's sort of like one of my the fucking smartest guy on earth”

I don't know Yeah, I'm just pointing out a problem, right? I do respect somebody that has a book that's just like hey, this sucks Yeah, like you're all bunch of flunkies and goons. Yeah, I don't know how to fix it But I'll see you guys later. I complain about like a Hollywood making like sequels and remakes all the time I don't have like a public policy solution to that. It just sucks. Why don't you make a movie

Why don't you make a game in the film

What do they game in the little in the film Peter? I love a game a little in the film. I'm I'm on your side my go on I will I will I will fund you so don't get too angry. So just he just end by saying I don't have any public policy recommendations and here's my reason You know the final chapter has a bunch of about like the sort of Impact that he believes that this has on society that it creates these like Resentments up and down the ladder and that you know

“I think this is sort of like a very basic lefty idea that elites take advantage of”

Resentments between non elites, right? So yeah, I think he sort of has this belief that these jobs Drag on society. I don't think he is identified like a discrete and identifiable thing

Right, I do think it feels hard to argue with the idea that the reason

Productivity started going to Consumption rather than leisure in the United States is that we lack what they have in Europe, right? Yeah, we don't have the unions the labor law protections That is the big difference here. And I think in my mind that that's sort of like obvious leftist shit 101. Yeah, but that's kind of what I like about it, right? I kind of feel like

Raver did this whole thought experiment that ended up just landing me at like, yeah We need labor law. Yeah, like I don't know the left and not on the right because like these obvious things Also, it doesn't his thesis depend on Western Europe having fewer bullshit jobs than we do yeah Brother which he which he doesn't he doesn't explore brother as the one who live there that do not have your bullshit job You met a French person have you asked them what they do? He sort of navigated his way

towards some truths here, right? And different different parts of the book. I do think that There are elements of our jobs that are bullshit. It seems to be objectively true that we are not pursuing leisure as a society in America, right, that we have not converted our productivity into leisure.

“Yeah, these are like real things and and I think like in you know in the micro he'll say these little things where you're like that's true”

Is the sort of for not the broad macro phenomenon of the bullshit job as he describes it real? I don't really think so I was like I'm much more negative on this book than he it seems like you are you said this is like an okay book This things bad to me. I will say that the experience of reading it is probably a lot better than the experience of hearing about it Okay, every few pages. You're like that's an interesting way to frame that yeah, and then if it's not quite right like right I do think is like managerial feudal idea of corporations even though it's not an accurate way to explain what's happening with bullshit

jobs is an interesting way to explain certain corporate dynamics. Maybe it's the opposite of Robert Kiesaki where like he was just an executable person to spend time with and David Grayberg seems like an okay guy It's been time with yeah, you're like and I really agree with that. There's also another a lot of the book is anecdotes that people send in about their bullshit jobs and it's extremely boring to read because every single one you're like Yeah, that doesn't sound like bullshit for the podcast it wouldn't be good to be like and here's another person who said that they did useless paper work

But like that's a large chunk of the book and I will say it's kind of fun to read like it There's something about it. That's a little bit entertaining. It's like cathartic. Yeah, there's something like a there's some like shared human experience in like This fucking shit we have to do sometimes because of our boss things. It's important and it's obviously not and that's also so relatable to the idea that some part of your job I think this is like universal some part of your job is complete bullshit right right I was able and I still am

Sort of on this train just convince myself that he's sort of pointed out this social phenomenon and he's inaccurately diagnosing it But it's a really interesting phenomenon the idea that we as a society have had the option to turn our increased productivity Into leisure and haven't done it. Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's true that we shouldn't get rid of the scommies Issues and it's especially true that we shouldn't get rid of the no hit randomized or Eldon rings framers Think it's not bullshit Peter. I want you to say

Whatever one listening wants you to say which is that it's cool to throw a ball far [BLANK_AUDIO]